SUPERHUMAN LIFE No. 81

YOUR REAL NATURE

by Ernest O'Neill

We have been discussing the fact that you and I are not simply sons and
daughters of our parents. Although we entered this life on earth through
their bodies, we ourselves have been created by God inside His Son who
appeared on earth around 4 b.c. as Jesus of Nazareth. He existed outside
this planet with his father, our creator; and inside him, we existed -
long before we appeared here. The myth of reincarnation misinterprets this
miraculous event by implying we existed in all kinds of other forms, but
the reality is that we are human because we are part of the Great Human,
Jesus Christ who is permanently both god and man. This is why Matthew
referred to Jesus as the son of man even when he was describing the final
judgement day when Jesus would return to earth as the judge of all
(Matthew 25:31).

What is Christ Like?

But because you have been made inside Christ, that is what you're really
like. Just as you cannot escape some of the characteristics of your mother
because you were born inside her, so you share the nature of Christ, God's
son. His nature is, of course, your real nature where your mother's was
often a temporary perversion of that. The result is that you yourself can
live in the pain of deception about your own real nature because you don't
see or accept what God Himself (and therefore you) is really like.

God himself is the person who resolved to have others like himself to
share his love and life. Although He could do this only by making them
inside his only-begotten son so that they shared his own actual nature,
yet he determined to do this. However, his nature is free - that is, he is
free to do what he wants - he has free will. This meant that the beings
that he created inside his son would also be free - free to abide in
Christ in peace and love or free to tear Christ apart inside by asserting
their will either in activity or passivity.

That is God's nature - willing to bear whatever pain is necessary in
order to bring into existence others like Himself ! It is also the nature
of Christ. And it is also your real nature ! God is one who faces all the
consequences of his good actions - that is his nature. He does not evade
the agony caused by those he has given freedom inside his son: he actually
dwells inside his son - and his son dwells inside him. So whatever Christ
bears from you each day, God himself bears. This is why Paul writes in 2
Corinthians 5:19 "in Christ, God was reconciling the world to
himself...". Our creator did the unthinkable; he put himself at our
mercy and bore the worst that we could do. Reality is that we are still
inside Christ and all that we do bears upon Him; and through Him, our
actions crucify God himself again and again. This is His nature ! This is
the only way he can bring into existence beings like himself - however
long it takes.

Active Perversion

But you cannot escape the reality that, however far you may have
wandered from it, your real nature is that of the "stone from which
you were hewn" or the person in whom you were created. You, too, are
made to bear and bear and bear again. Whenever you try to reject this
reality, your life looses direction and you become bewildered and
unfulfilled. Eventually, you can even die in desolation and
disorientation.

We humans can bring about such an unreal perversion of ourselves either
by rising against such a consistently "submissive" nature or by
sinking away from the activity of such a nature. From his own birth in
infinity, Christ has continuously bowed to His Father's commitment to "work
all things according to the counsel of his will" i.e. to make things
work the way He wills. Even when Jesus felt on the cross in 29 a.d. that
he was utterly alone and cried out "my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me", still he stayed on the cross and trusted God to see him
cease to exist, if necessary. This is his nature; and it is ours also. We
are made to allow Christ to continue to be himself in us. We are made to
live a life of active trust and submission to whatever God allows in our
lives; we are made to act in positive love and to refuse to "call a
host of angels to our aid" or to use Peter's sword to protect
ourselves by our own chosen ways. Whenever we reject our real nature by
evading God's burden-gifts or acting to remove them by our own methods, we
experience dislocation and disorientation - the darkness of Hell.

Passive Perversion

We can also pervert our real nature by passively sinking away from this
whole reality that we are actually part of Christ by withdrawing into our
own selves and running a little imaginary world where we are the center,
not God. This is the opposite of the Prometheus-life assertion of our
wills against God's ways; it is rather a passive withdrawal into ourselves
by refusing the whole truth that we are part of Christ and do not have an
existence of our own inside ourselves apart from Him. This leads to a Hell
of loneliness, isolation, and self-defence that becomes utterly
unbearable.

Reality is that you are part of Christ - part of God Himself - and your
happiness is firmly anchored in being what you are. Such an attitude and
life enables your creator to be what he wants to be in you; and it enables
you to be what you are in Him.